FSW Chapter 20

Qualifications

It was an apprentice match, not a tournament between official knights. Naturally, there had been no great commotion.

Besides, he would have been participating this time!

He hadn't said a word. Even yesterday, at the end of their session.

She knew by now that he said very little and almost never spoke about himself. She had accepted that as part of how he was built. But learning it secondhand, through someone else, still left her feeling a little hurt.

"Today was the final bout," Hilton was saying. "He should be back to his regular schedule starting tomorrow."

"If today was the last match, Sir Russell would have competed as well."

That he had made the final pair required no deduction.

"Yes. He did. I'd only seen his earlier rounds secondhand—today was the first time I watched directly. His technique is notable. Quite different from the standard school, but that was precisely what made it interesting."

Unlike certain other senior knights who had responded to Lavis's approach with what could only be described as professional hostility, Hilton was assessing him purely on the quality of what he did. The unpolished origin of the style seemed to be, for Hilton, an argument in its favor rather than against it.

The rawness of it was, to him, part of what made it worth watching.

"He won, then."

"You sound very certain, Your Highness."

"He's my teacher."

Hilton made a face that settled somewhere between reluctant and resigned, and then nodded.

Of course he had.

It wasn't even her win, and she felt absurdly pleased. If she had been him, she would have announced it in every corridor she passed through. But she could wager her lemon tea that he had said nothing to anyone. The cup was empty. That was irrelevant.

"He wasn't hurt?" she asked.

"The gap in skill was such that there was very little opportunity for injury."

Good.

Something eased in her chest, and the energy came back into her at such a pace that she caught herself humming as she returned to the letters. She would finish the rest of this, and then she would go to the patissier and ask for something celebratory. Choux with diplomat cream, perhaps—she had seen those done beautifully. She would ask Ellis and Joy as well.

Hilton watched her. His face had been shifting for the past few minutes in a direction she wasn't paying attention to. He was still watching when his expression settled into something distinctly serious.

The way she kept asking after that boy. The worried look when she heard about the injury. Running to the training yard the way she had the other week. And now, that expression—

"Your Highness, might I ask—"

"Yes?" She looked up, cheerful.

Hilton appeared to catch himself midway and answered himself instead, quietly.

"No. That couldn't possibly be the case."

"...Sir Hilton?"

"Absolutely not. That cannot be allowed."

Hilton clenched his fist, squared his shoulders, and gave a single emphatic nod. Whatever he was thinking, the expression was one of absolute resolve.

"Are the choux ready?"

"Yes, Your Highness. Only the packaging remains."

The patissier set down a tray of rounds—plump, golden, risen exactly as they should be—and the look on his face as he regarded them was the particular satisfaction of someone for whom this work was a calling. Yesterday, after Nishina had consulted with him and with Ellis, the decision had been made: diplomat cream choux for the occasion.

She had offered to help. The patissier had declined this offer with a firmness that bordered on alarm, and so she had retreated and left him to it. Looking at the results, she felt only relief at how things had turned out.

He offered her one.

She bit into it. The casing gave with a clean crack, and the cream—sweet, cool—dissolved before she had quite prepared for it.

"This is wonderful."

The patissier exhaled. His princess had particular standards, developed through months of testing and refining together, and a compliment from her was not given automatically. His shoulders puffed back up.

He vanished briefly and returned with a separate tray: scones, dark with cranberries throughout, baked to an even color that was exactly right. He had been pleased with them too, she could tell. He asked if she would like to try one.

She did.

The texture was quite different—less sweet, less yielding—and the cranberry punctuated it in small, tart bursts. Something that would sit very nicely alongside tea. Good quality, she thought.

'Something this clean-tasting — Brother would like it.'

Since the whole-wheat cookies, she had thought it every time a dessert arrived that was clean rather than rich—would he accept this one? Would he at least not refuse to taste it?

It was a pointless reflex. She knew what it was worth. Her expression, which had been warmly present, went somewhere else.

The patissier was watching her. The pride went out of his shoulders.

Normally she would have noticed that look and covered it over with compliments. She was good at that. But her head was too loud right now for anything that careful.

'Would you eat something I brought?'

His voice was still sharp in her memory. She had thought, going to his office with her careful package, that she had a plan. She had been wrong about what kind of planning the situation required.

If she brought these now—if she wrapped them carefully and went to his door—he would refuse them again. Or perhaps, this time, he would not even let her inside.

The truth was simpler than her planning.

There was no courage left for another refusal. That was all.

Turned away a few times, and already curled up like that. She had no respect for herself in this moment. But what could she do. Being looked at coldly by someone she cared for hurt more than she had expected. That was simply how it had turned out.

She had used the unhealed scrapes as an excuse and stayed away. In a palace this size, two people with almost no overlap in their daily movements could avoid each other for weeks without effort. She had managed it. She hadn't seen his face, let alone spoken to him.

But she couldn't keep hesitating indefinitely. She had been turning the problem over every day, trying to find the point of contact.

She needed to see him first. Without that, no attempt was possible. Going to his office was likely to fail—he wouldn't receive her. Official council schedules didn't allow for conversation. And counting on coincidence in a palace this large was essentially counting on nothing.

Maybe, she thought, I should simply sit at the training yard for however long it takes.

He never skipped training. A day spent waiting there was a day that would eventually produce a result.

The plan was somewhat undignified. She was still thinking through its contours when she turned a corner in the corridor and collided, mentally, with the realization that she was looking directly at him.

She had been wanting to run into him. Now that it was actually happening—her mind goes white.

He was on his way back from training—light clothes, hair slightly loose, the particular tiredness that very fit people carry without noticing. The distance between them was closing.

'What do I say.'

Ah—she should have just brought the scones. Even if he refused them, at least they'd have given her a reason to speak. For now she would try an ordinary greeting—the weather, his afternoon, something—

And in that moment, every prepared word left her.

Aiden's right palm—it was covered in blood. The skin across it had split open; blood had pooled in the cup of his hand and was falling, drop by drop, to the floor.

The sight knocked the sense clean out of her. She heard something come out of her before she had assembled a complete thought.

"Brother! Blood—blood!! Are you hurt?! How did—no, quickly—treatment, you need—"

"Stop making a scene over something this minor."

"Minor? Your hand is—"

She caught his wrist just below the wound—carefully, so as not to press anything—and was still looking from the blood to his face and back when he pulled free of her grip with a single smooth motion.

"This is not your concern."

He turned and walked away. No second glance.

She stood for a moment with the cold of his departure settling over her. It was certain that he was hurting. And she was equally certain that the hurt was not something she had standing to address.

Still.

She made herself move.

Her feet had already closed the distance before she arrived at the decision to close it. She stepped in front of him. He stopped—unavoidably—and his eyebrow rose at an angle that communicated his opinion of the interruption without a word being necessary.

She looked at his expression and did not look away.

She pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve and wrapped it around his hand—once, twice, snug—before he could object. His voice came while she was still tying it.

"What do you think you're doing right now—"

"I know I have no standing to worry about you, Brother." She kept her hands on the knot. "Even so."

Silence.

"Even so, please see a physician. You'll need to train again tomorrow."

She tightened the last fold and released him.

He looked down at the white cloth on his hand. His expression was not warm. She was aware she had overstepped; she had known it before she stepped. But she hadn't been able to make herself stay back. It bothered her far more that he treated his own injuries as irrelevant than it bothered her that he disliked her.

That was why she had moved without deciding to.

She had done something presumptuous. She knew that. And now she waited to see what he would do with it—

Pull the cloth off immediately. throw a few words at her. Leave.

Instead, he pressed his lips together and simply walked away, as he had before. His back was as cold as ever.

The white of her handkerchief was still wrapped around his hand.

It was such a small thing.

She felt her chest fill in a way she had not been ready for, and then felt the worry come back in behind the feeling, just as quickly, because she needed to actually see him receive treatment before she could release any of it.

This was going to have to be enough.

Even as she convinced herself, her anxious eyes refused to leave him. In the end, Nishina stood fixed—like a statue of eternal vigil, until the last edge of Aiden's sleeve disappeared.